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User blog:Holomanga/Growth Regimes
As a civilisation develops, it passes through multiple growth regimes – periods representing broadly different rates of economic growth obtained from different sources. Forager The forager growth regime is the first that many civilisations go through. In this regime, members of the civilisation rely on resources they can acquire naturally from the unmodified environment, as they did before they developed a civilisation. Growth in the forager regime is very slow, and tied to population; the size of the economy is constrained to match the unmodified carrying capacity of the land, which is often very low compared to what can be achieved with modification. Doubling times of hundred of thousands of years are not atypical, and this growth regime usually lasts millions of years. Agricultural The agricultural growth regime begins when a civilisation begins altering the environment around them through introducing more land-efficient energy sources than the existing ones, and then managing this source. This process is known as agriculture. For example, a biological terrestrial agriculturalist may begin replacing wild flora with fields of crops. The increase in the carrying capacity of the land, and the possibility for increased population to continue raising the carrying capacity, massively accelerates the growth rate. Economic size is still tied to population and carrying capacity, though this carrying capacity can now be increased. Doubling times are typically on the order of a thousand years, and this regime typically lasts tens of thousands of years. Industrial The industrial growth regime begins when a civilisation starts to use technology in order to mass-produce goods, often using highly-concentrated energy sources to power artificial machinery rather than relying on their own strength. This refinement of natural resources into more valuable manufactured products enables the economy to grow much faster than the population, for the first time increasing wealth per capita as well as overall wealth. Doubling times are typically on the order of 15 years, and this regime typically lasts a century or two. Computational The computational growth regime begins when a civilisation is able to accelerate its own thought processes through transferring to a different substrate. This acceleration means that the economy can perform many of the same operations, but sped up massively. Due to the high speeds, computational civilisations are often small, with computational megacities being densely packed server farms that require continuous cooling in order to allow for communication between separate parts to be as fast as possible rather than the sprawling suburbs more typical of industrial civilisations. The growth rate during the computational regime depends on just how much acceleration is possible. Typically, factors of a hundred are reasonable, decreasing doubling times to a few months; overall, this regime lasts around a few years. Singularitarian The singularitarian growth regime begins when a civilisation solves the barriers that allow for easy intelligence amplification, such as through the development of a universal nanofabricator. A simple example is a computational civilisation that uses its accelerated thought to develop a faster substrate, and then uses that accelerated thought to develop an even faster substrate, and so on. Growth rates during the singularitarian regime are hyperbolic, rather than exponential – growth tends to infinity in finite time, with a larger singularitarian economy being easier to expand, rather than harder. In practice, due to resource constraints, this growth eventually hits a limit, given by the physics of the substrate that the singularitarian economy is occurring on; the matter left behind is called computronium, econotronium, or utilitronium. This regime ends very quickly; a civilisation can pass through it entirely in a few hours. Stellar The stellar growth regime begins when a civilisation begins expanding between multiple solar systems in order to grow further, after reaching the limits of internal development. Growth rates in the stellar regime are slow, due to the large distances between stars – growth is cubic, with doubling times beginning on the order of years and ending on the order of hundreds of thousand of years as more of the galaxy is exploited and the nearest stars are further away and more difficult to reach. Galactic The galactic growth regime begins when a civilisation reaches the limits of its home galaxy, and must expand between multiple galaxies in order to grow further. Growth rates in the galactic regime are even slower than in the stellar regime; they are still cubic, but doubling times are on the order of millions of years (initially) and increase to billions of years. Since growth rates are so slow, galactic civilisations are often able to slow their processes whilst still being able to keep pace with the economy. One form of this is aestivation, where the civilisation waits until a time when the universe is much colder and then computes extremely slowly in order to minimise the energy used per computation. Multiversal The multiversal regime begins when a civilisation fully exploits its universe, and then begins making use of other universes in order to exploit their resources, at first using nudge style drives with hypermatter and infomatter and then later using search style drives such as branch and loop drives. Transitioning from the universal to the multiversal regime represents a huge step-up in growth rates again; multiversal growth is exponential, and has a doubling time on the order of however long it takes for a rake to self-replicate; difficult to say, since the operation of the rake is outside of time, though probably on the order of the size of a Hubble volume, a few billion years. This growth regime typically lasts trillions of realtime years, and if a further regime is not entered is often cut short by the realtime death of the local multiverse. SAW The SAW regime begins when a civilisation is able to construct a SAW, producing gliders that travel between universes completely outside of time. A large SAW array acting continuously, in the bundle agrowth nd coherent modes, allows a continuum of universes to be reached continuously. This regime once again exhibits hyperbolic growth, although in this regime the limit is literally infinite, the only constraint being the size of the multiverse (~ℵ1). With much of the economic activity now occurring in the SAW, outside of time, giving a doubling time or a time to reach infinity is not particularly meaningful. Category:Blog posts